Paladin's Cove beta release, and feedback

This is truly baffling. I have to say I've never seen that before. Are you using Temple+ by chance?

Regarding power level of encounters. Still tweaking, obviously. Chapter 2 has encounters fit for levels 6-12. And that's a wide range. Also, as you know, the order you do the quests is at the player's choice. So if you're at the low end of that range, be very cautious and paranoid till you hit the levels 8-9. If I was able to do it over again, from scratch, I would probably split Chapter 2 into two Chapters. One would be for levels 6-9, and next for levels 9-12, something like that. I suppose I could still do that WITHIN Chapter 2 itself, by limiting the choice to doing 3 of the more lower-powered GM quests first, then the other 3 GM quests will open up after those 3 are done. Something to think about.

A good survival tip is to finish as many Chapter 1 quests as possible before moving on to Chapter 2. Even a few guys gaining one more level will help.

Also, I think there's an option to "flee" the second part of that Toll Troll encounter, if you think you're not prepared. But the encounter won't return.

Yes, Stoneskin is one of the best ways to spend all that extra gold you have laying around.

 

1. The summoned creatures can sometimes do that if their factions don't match. Apparently there's a problem there. That kind of thing has been a problem since the beginning of the game. I'll check the factions on those guys for that encounter. Thanks.

2. Charm Person - that is actually working exactly as I want it to. I de-powered the spell somewhat.

Charm Person was never intended to dominate the target. But people got used to it working that way from the original game. The spell doesn't make your opponent go from attacking you, to suddenly stabbing his best friend in the throat. In fact, you shouldn't really be able to cast it during combat. So I came to a compromise, and made it so the guy DOES become charmed, but he just stands there and does nothing, unsure who his friends are. If there's a rabid outcry from players about this, I'll put it back the way it was, no big deal. But I like it this way. I know it's fun the overpowered way, but it was making early encounters way too easy. Now you have something to look forward to when you finally get Dominate Person at 9th level.
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3. Hero's Feast - I almost left this spell out. It's a patchwork creation from Co8, and it was always buggy and unreliable from my memory. I have to look up my notes and see what I did to it.

Edit: Here's what I found in my notes, so I guess it's time to see what's happening :

Heroes Feast - added new from 8.1.0, 1/17/18
Spell225 - Heroes' Feast.py
225 - Heroes' Feast.txt
no scroll added yet.

*** Not working right, need to explore when I have time ***​

 

I'll try to check one of the older saves and see if I can confirm it. I do have Temple+ installed, but I'm starting the game through TFE-X and I didn't use any of the Temple+ options. I just didn't uninstall it.

I managed to figure out the "flee" choice after a couple tries and got to the Crossing again. Then I

Spoiler

hit Rivermist, defeated the pirates and sailed over to the island. Clearing everything but the lower level(s?) of the keep got three of my five characters to level 8 but I was so overburdened with loot that I was dropping things like magic armor and weapons. So I sailed back to PC and unloaded some stuff, bought a few things, scribed some scrolls and added a few bonuses to magic weapons/armor. I've only tried the big fight under the keep once, and without much pre-buffing, so that's the next step, I think.

I really have no idea how capable I am as opposed to other players. I am reasonably familiar with 3rd edition D&D and I've played ToEE and Keep on the Borderlands several times. All of which is to say that I'm not a rookie but also probably not metagaming enough to be really good. I like the idea that there are battles I shouldn't be able to win at this level, as long as there are other options available and as of now, I haven't run into a situation where I'm completely unable to progress. Point being: don't "nerf" things too much.

 

Has anyone else had a crash to desktop during the

Spoiler

battle under the tower in the pirate island map?

Three times in a row now I've managed to get the battle almost won without casualties and the game just ended. I don't think there's anything in common between the crashes happen except it's possible I was casting a spell with my cleric or wizard.

 

Instead of preventing PCs from doing things very above their level, I recommend warning them that the content is difficult and intended for level X - Y. That's how one of our GMs handled content in an open world.

 

The same happened to me for that event and even worse for the next one ( which is a v v hard one ) Not sure if this is the case for everyone but in my game I've eventually realised that this was happening due to too many AoE spells ( I tend to heavily use Web + Stinking cloud + Grease + Spike stones for big battles with large numbers of powerful enemies sometimes more than one of each spell if the enemy are split into groups , Stinking Cloud one of the most effective spells in the game!!)

 

That makes sense. And it could be the sheer number of spell effects going on at the time, not just AoE. At that point in the battle, I am generally not getting a ton of benefit from Stinking Cloud, so maybe I'll dismiss it before casting more spells. May try to silence the enemy spellcaster, too, but that's difficult because of her location and the danger of characters getting surrounded.

In that battle, there are two uber-tough melee opponents (bruisers) that have +20 to their attacks and hit for around 40 damage per round. Then there are the swashbucklers, who avoid attacks of opportunity and backstab for tons of damage if you don't take them out. My two melee characters with 22 strength generally do around 10-15 points per attack and usually hit 2 times per three (hasted) attacks. One of them took improved critical, weapon focus and weapon specialization so he tends to crit once every 3-5 hits, which helps.

I think toning down the bruisers would be a good idea, though I've managed to "almost" win the battle two out of five times without a loss, so if there's a way to fix the crash issue the balance isn't that big a deal.

 

@rojay about the crashes:
Try running the game with the command line switch

toee.exe tigdebug=file

This will produce a logfile in the toee dir that might provide some insight on why the game crashes. If it crashes again, make sure to copy the logfile so that you don't overwrite it.

 

I probably should have asked for clarification before trying that. . .

I brought up the console, typed the command and then had my wizard cast stoneskin on herself from a scroll. She cast resist fire, was surrounded by a circle of flames and the combat UI started up. I could not do anything nor could I end her turn or switch to another character. So I ended ToEE with task manager and tried again. This time she cast stoneskin just fine and the only weird thing that happened at first was when my rogue cast fireball from a scroll, the path of the fireball stayed onscreen for a few minutes. Everything else seemed to go fine until it crashed, and this time - unlike the previous three where I was paying attention - it wasn't when I cast another spell.

Can you tell me where to find the log? The text document I found just describes the game starting up and ends with, "
INFO: Command line: [C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Temple of Elemental Evil\toee.exe, -maxlevel:20]
Feb 13, 2025 1:56:19 PM org.co8.jtfe.logging.TFELogger log
INFO: Closing ToEE Front-End X (the game process was successfully started)."

I did a search for "log" in the ToEE directory and that's the only text file. The rest of the files are one each of PYC and PY and a bunch of MES files.

 

I'm heading to the Pirate area myself with my current final test group, before the next beta version. I'll fight those last 2 pirate battles repeatedly, and with lots of area spells, and see if I can repeat those crashes you guys are having. I have a group of 5 who are all 9th level (except for one loser that died twice), so it should be a good test.

 

I'm looking to do this, especially for chapter 2, where things get a little tougher. But I'm not sure where to mention it without breaking the game immersion. Like I don't want a Guildmaster saying "Oh hey Gintar, this quest is recommended for levels 8-10, so be careful.". Even saying something like "this may be really hard" is subjective.

One thing I have done over the last few months, however, was to put a role-played "warning" before certain tough unexpected boss battles. What I mean by this, is that the game doesn't come out and say it directly, but hints it. Example: before the final battle in the tunnels with the were-rats, I let the party hear some noise coming from down the hole, and allow someone from the party peek out and see that something nefarious is going on. When this happens in the game now, take it as a warning that the next encounter may be a step tougher than the rest of the quest.

 

Did you find the Extra-planar Chest miniature?

Spoiler

Under the bed in the Mistress's room in the Stronghold.
It's the room at the very bottom-right on level 1.

 

It should create a debug.txt file. What you posted above is probably the tfe-x logfile (which you should not be running, to he clear - directly run the toee.exe file).
Make sure you type the command line switch exactly as I wrote.

 

I did not, because I think I need to win the battle that crashes the game before I can get there. The fight that crashes it for me is the first one after I climb down the ladder.

So to be clear, I start the game and open the console then type "toee.exe tigdebug=file" then close the console and play? I really appreciate your help and I'm sorry if I'm missing something obvious.

 

Ah no, I mean the command to launch the toee.exe file itself. Go inside the toee folder, find the toee.exe file, and create a shortcut to it. Right click the shortcut and in the "target" field add tigdebug=file at the end. It should something look like this:

Code:

YOUR_TOEE_FOLDER/toee.exe tigdebug=file

Maybe inside the quotes, I don't remember for sure, play around with it.

Then use the shortcut to launch the game.